3 Proven Pricing Strategies for Pro Creatives to Raise Their Rates

I assume that if you’re a professional creative—i.e. filmmaker, photographer, writer, etc.—a blog post about pricing strategies is the last thing you want to read. I bet you a million dollars you got into a creative line of business not because you wanted to make a lot of money, but because there was something about this art that spoke to you. You probably can’t even put it into words. There’s just something about using your creativity to move people that feels like it’s made for you. Am I right?

As artists, we forget that when you step into the world of entrepreneurship with our art, there are new factors that come into play. There are facts of life that make perfect sense in the business world, but are foreign to the artist inside us. It’s like the left side and right side of our brains are in battle with each other for our attention. 

But if you’re going to make a living selling your art, there’s one particular truth you will need to wrestle with from day one. And that is...

Worth is in the eye of the beholder

What does that mean? Well, it means that it doesn’t matter what you think you’re worth. What matters is what your potential audience or clients think you’re worth. I want to be careful. I’m not saying that your self-worth has no value. It absolutely does. I mean, come on—if you don’t believe in your work, no one else will.

What I am saying is that regardless of what value you personally believe your art to have, ultimately it’s the market that is going to determine what you can sell it for. This is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a curse because you may feel that the amount of time and energy you put into your craft is worth $500/hour; and there very well may be someone out there in the world willing to pay you for that. But if your market can only bear $100/hour, that is a reality you have to face, and you’ll need to adjust your rates accordingly.

But the flip side is also true. You may be at a point in your career where you feel you are only worth $20/hour, but there are people in your market just as talented (or maybe even not as talented) as you, yet they’re earning that aforementioned $100/hour. My experience has been that most artists fall into this category—where they under-value their worth.

And I get it. Part of being an artist is feeling like your art is never good enough. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this, if you truly have the heart and soul of an artist, you will always struggle with feelings of self-doubt, insecurity, or dissatisfaction with your skill level. It’s those feelings that bump up against the business facts of life and make it difficult to implement any pricing strategies. These feelings make you continue to charge less than what you could get because you feel unworthy to charge it.

The triple threat of pricing strategies

So, if you’re ready to start getting paid more for your time and talent, here you go.

#1. Gigs based

This is a pretty straight forward approach. For every new gig you get, raise your rate 5-10% (or whatever you feel comfortable). This was the approach I took when first starting in event video work nearly twenty years ago. 

Another approach that is similar is to increase your rate after every set number of gigs. A good number is about 1/4 the number of gigs or projects you plan to do in a year. If you think you’ll have twenty projects in a year, raise your rates after every 5th project booked.

#2. Time-based

Increase your rates once or twice a year (e.g. every six months or January 1 every year). This method may feel more comfortable for newbies because it gives you a decent amount of time to feel good about your rates as well as provide a sense of consistency in the marketplace. Also, using this seasonal approach does give people on your email list time to make arrangements to hire you if it really is in their plans at some point (but maybe they’re just waiting for new budgets to be approved by management).

#3. Double down

In all honesty, #3 isn’t so much a “strategy” as it may be a corrective measure to expedite the quality of the clientele who hires you. It’s an aggressive strategy that I’m positive 99.9% of you will utterly ignore. But I’m going to mention it anyway. 

Here’s what I want you to do. Prepare two price points for the next two potential clients you meet. For client #1, give them a price in line with what you have always done. For client #2, DOUBLE IT! I’m not kidding. If you were going to charge client #1 $2,000 to do a job, charge client #2 $4,000 for that same job.

An old friend and colleague, John Goolsby, is an internationally known event and corporate filmmaker who’s filmed celebrity weddings and corporate videos for Fortune 100 clients. He’s taught at international conventions for over nearly thirty years, and is famous for making this suggestion to new videographers—“Double your prices overnight.” The overwhelming majority of people who hear his advice never heed it. But he has stories of the few people through the years who have and it’s changed their whole life.

For the record, I’m not saying to become that $500/hour pipe-dreamer I mentioned earlier. Because frankly, it’s way more likely you’re so under-valued, that doubling your rates will bring you more in line with the market. 

But if doubling them is too much for you, increase them 50%, or 25%. Just try it. Once you start getting people to say “yes,” that left side of your brain (the analytical and business side), will gain more confidence and start bringing in more money. And that will make the right-brained side of you feel more confident too. You may then come to realize that “Hey, maybe my work really is worth it.”

The ultimate goal is to use pricing strategies that allow you to stay ahead of inflation, sustain your business, and feel good about the time and effort you invest in each project.